Zoe's brows shot up. "That's brave of them."
"They're nice gentlemen," Mrs. Fairfax said, her forehead furrowing as if some part of her wasn't sure of this. "Very handsome and polite. I can't imagine why the ghosts, or whatever this is, would take offense at them."
"Well, I'll go see," Zoe said. "You'll take care of Magnus while I'm gone?"
"Oh, absolutely," promised Mrs. Fairfax, then blushed a little bit.
It was good to approach the coming task with a grin. Humor was a big part of the angels' nature, though some people liked to think they were serious. The more Zoe could match their joyous vibration, the easier accepting their help would be.
She took the stairs rather than the elevator, not sure what electrical devices the purported poltergeist might affect. She was breathless when she reached the fourth-floor landing, which made it all the easier to see her exhalations puffing white in the air. The floor was frigid, as if an entire ghost convention had gathered there. Zoe could hear the rain of rocks from where she'd paused to gather herself. She understood why guests had been disturbed. It would have taken quite a talent to sleep through that racket.
Room 410 was a left turn from the landing, at the end of a narrow, wainscoted hall. The two men Mrs. Fairfax had mentioned waited outside the door. One was bundled in a sheet, and the other in a fringed coverlet. Their bare feet suggested they were na**d except for that.
Zoe wondered if the poltergeist had interrupted these two in the act. Even from a distance, they had the flushed and rumpled look of lovebirds. Opposites must have attracted, because one man was blond and lean, and the other dark and muscular—like a runner and a wrestler thrown together by the hand of Fate. The thought of them working out their differences between the sheets caused her tender bits to heat, despite her many excellent reasons not to be aroused by the thought of two buff males getting it on.
She pressed her temples between her thumb and fingers. It was perfectly understandable if she had sex on the brain right now, but she needed to let it go. The perversity of her personal kinks was not the issue at hand. She continued down the hall in what she hoped were confidence-inducing strides.
"It's okay," she said when the fair-haired man moved forward to intercept her. "I'm the ghost buster."
Her heart knew before her eyes did. Her sneakers slowed on the flowered carpet, her face suddenly too hot for the icy air.
"Zoe?" said the fair-haired man. "Zoe, is that you?"
His palm was pressed to his chest, like a prince about to swear an oath. Zoe took in his appearance with a single blink. To her dismay, he hadn't lost his hair or grown a beer gut. He wasn't shorter than she remembered or less handsome. Truth be told, he looked better than he had when he was eighteen. More adult. More male. His eyes were still the blue of a tropic sea, and they still begged better than any eyes she knew.
"Alex," she said, his name coming out too hoarse for comfort.
"Uh, I can go," said the other man. "If you two want to be alone with the rocks."
She remembered what she'd assumed when she first saw them and abruptly knew it was true. Room 410 had one bed, not two, and Alex's color was way too high for them to have been sharing it as friends. Come to think of it, that wasn't just a flush on his face, that was a whisker burn.
Her old pain rushed back with stomach-turning force. That she hadn't been enough for Alex. That no matter what he said, he hadn't truly loved her. She thought she'd moved past this, but it seemed not. Her humiliation might have happened yesterday, instead of fifteen years ago.
The thing was, on this day, she had no right to be hurt or angry about who Alex took to bed.
"There's no reason to leave," she said, her vocal chords thankfully under control again. "Unless you'd rather not stick around while I work."
"Oh, I'd love to watch," Alex's lover said, his smile diffident but charming. "Lately, I've been getting quite the education in supernatural phenomena."
Alex wasn't watching him. His gaze was running over her somewhat haphazard outfit: bright green silky short shorts, running shoes with no socks, and a belly-baring white tank top with a moth-eaten, pink crocheted sweater dragged over the top. Not having expected an audience, she hadn't put on a bra. She was small enough to go without one… except when she really wished she were covered up.
Her gratitude that she'd shaved her legs this morning wasn't something she wanted to think about.
"We got you out of bed," he said dazedly.
Zoe didn't bother to contradict him, because the hint of judgment in the flattening of his mouth made her pride bristle. Let him think she'd been yanked from just as warm a pair of arms as he had.
"If you didn't want to disturb anyone," she said, "maybe you shouldn't have taken room 410."
The set of his mouth turned sheepish. "I didn't think it would be this bad."
She almost snapped something about other decisions he hadn't thought through any better, then blew out her anger on a breath. She'd forgiven him for her sake, for her own peace of mind. Now was not the time to be forgetting that.
"It shouldn't be this bad," she admitted, her voice still a little clipped. Then, preferring to avoid bumping against any more of their ancient history, she reached for 410's doorknob.
Alex caught her arm before she could turn it. The warmth of his hand was an unwelcome shock, as was the way his heat slid over nerves he shouldn't have been able to excite after all these years. "Those rocks are big, Zoe. You might get hurt."
She wished he didn't sound so caring. It dissolved her anger too handily. She turned her eyes to the worn carpet. "It's all right. I can do whatever I need from the hall."
Reluctantly, he released her. He rubbed his palm down the coverlet, as if touching her had been equally uncomfortable for him. "There's something else in there, something… not nice."
Zoe nodded, not telling him she'd already sensed it. "I'll be careful," she said.
She drew a deep, slow breath to center herself before opening the door. A few, small pebbles were all that were falling now, but the entire floor and most of the bed were covered in a layer of gray rocks. If she'd known how to whistle, she would have. She'd never seen a disembodied spirit accomplish anything like this.
Curious, she turned her inner vision around the room, wondering what the white lady and her buddies thought of this incursion into their space. But the usual specters weren't about. More surprisingly, she sensed none of the purposeless anger that was a poltergeist's calling card. The "not niceness" Alex mentioned had what she could only call a professional feel, as if someone had sent this energy to wreak havoc.